Anti-slavery men in the slave States could obtain no redress for any outrage. The slaveholders in the slave States had prac tically subverted the Constitution and established a despotism on its ruins. The bludgeon and the bowie knife were the ready instruments to suppress the printing press, and silence the freeman's voice. Civil liberty ceased to exist there. The old fundamental principles of liberty embodied in Magna Charta and the Declaration of Independence ceased to have practical existence. The despotism of the oligarchy was supreme. Neither at the bar, nor in the pulpit, neither from the newspaper, the stump, nor from the bench; among the people, before the courts, nor in the legislative halls, was the voice of liberty secured by law, permitted to be heard. Negroes, fugitives from slavery, were scourged, whipped, and in some cases burned to death. The literature of the English language, school books, and books upon religion, literature and painting, were expurgated, and the generous, manly, eloquent utterances of liberty, stricken from their pages. Such was the dark despotism which settled over the land of Jefferson and Washington. It was against such a power, represented by an aristocracy of slaveholders, many of whom were vulgar, gross, licentious, boasting, cruel and treacherous, that the free spirit of the North now rose and grappled. The slaveholders knowing the devotion of the free States to the Union, and the forbearance of the North, habitually threatened disunion whenever necessary to carry a point.

Indeed, in the light of to-day, it is clear that a conspiracy to dissolve the Union as soon as they ceased to govern it, and establish a slaveholding Confederacy, had long existed at the South.

The impartial historian will find in the celebrated Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798 and 1799, the germ of secession and the rebellion. These resolutions were communicated to the several State Legislatures, but adopted by none, and their author, Madison, subsequently explained and repudiated them. They declared among other things, that, the States, "as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to

judge for itself as well of infractions of the compact as of the mode and means of redress."

It is not surprising that Wise, of Virginia, and Breckenridge, of Kentucky, quoted these resolutions in defence of their treason. Nor that Calhoun and Hayne brought them forward in 1832, as a precedent for nullification, but they were then crushed by the inflexible will of Jackson, the eloquence of Clay, the statesmanship of Edward Livingston and the overwhelming logic of Webster.

Notwithstanding the complete and crushing overthrow, which this heresy received at the hands of Webster, in the United States Senate, South Carolina, by a State Convention, declared her withdrawal from the Union, and her determination to proceed to organize a separate State Government. Her Governor announced his paramount allegiance to South Carolina. So did the traitor Robert E. Lee, announce his paramount allegiance to Virginia, and drew his sword against the flag he had sworn to defend. South Carolina prepared for an armed collision with the National Government. She made the tariff the pretext for her revolutionary proceedings. Congress, weakly, under the menace of impending war, modified the obnoxious tariff, and the South Carolinians retraced their steps. The modification of the tariff at that time, and under the circumstances, was a great error. President Jackson desired to vindicate with arms and through the judicial tribunals of his country, the supremacy of the Constitution and the laws. Had this been done and some of the ringleaders tried and executed as Jackson wished, possibly the necessity or the occasion of such vindication through the late terrible civil war might not have occurred. Jackson sent General Scott with a naval and military force to Charleston to maintain the National authority. The contrast between the course taken by the iron Jackson in 1832, and the imbecile, if not treacherous Buchanan, in 1860, is as striking as the difference in the two men.

The encroachments of the slaveholders and the subservence to them of the Whig and Democratic parties, led in 1839, to the formation of a party in direct antagonism to

slavery, called the abolition party. The seeds of this organization had been scattered by the writings of the fathers of the revolutionary period; its growth, nurtured by the persecutions and blood of martyrs to free speech and a free press; its aims and objects promoted by the teachings of Jefferson, Jay, Channing, John Quincy Adams, William Leggett, Whittier, Horace Mann and many others. This small party, full of fiery zeal, and ardour, and talent, placed itself in direct antagonism to the gigantic institution of slavery. It boldly grappled with a power which at that time held and had long controlled, the National, and most of the State Governments; dominated over parties, ruled the churches, the press, the financial and business interests of the country. A power whose social influence was despotic, which held both the sword and the purse of the nation; which filled every office from President to the village Postmaster. This small party, armed with truth and right, met this gigantic despotism, and in the end triumphed over it. Although the vote which it polled at the first Presidential election at which it voted separately, was but a few thousands, yet its influence upon popular sentiment was felt and rapidly increased. At the Presidential election of 1840, its vote had increased more than ten-fold. The ability, eloquence, and genius displayed by its publications and the power of its orators, greatly aided by the encroachments, the cruelties, and arrogance of the slave power, prepared the way for the Free Soil party of 1848.

In that year, the whig party having nominated General Taylor as its candidate, and the democratic party having refused to nominate Mr. Van Buren because of his opposition to the annexation of Texas, and nominating General Cass, and both parties refusing to take position against the extension of slavery, the liberty party, uniting with the earnest anti-slavery men of all parties, met at Buffalo in June, 1848.

The whig convention had refused to adopt any platform of principles; it had refused to declare itself against the extension of slavery into the territories. The Buffalo convention nominated Martin Van Buren for President, and Charles Francis Adams for Vice President. It was attended by

delegates from all the free States, and from Maryland, the District of Columbia, Delaware and Virginia. Among its leading members were Salmon P. Chase, Charles Sumner, Benjamin F. Butler, Preston King, Joshua R. Giddings, Charles Francis Adams, and many others scarcely less distinguished.

This memorable convention gave a great impulse towards the final triumph of freedom. After reciting the action of the democratic and whig conventions, the convention declared its conviction of the necessity of announcing its independence of the slave power, and its determination to rescue the Government from its control. The delegates solemnly resolved to stand on the National platform of freedom against the sectional platform of slavery-that, while they disclaimed the power to interfere with slavery in the States, that Congress had the power and ought to exercise it, of prohibiting slavery in all the territories of the United States; that Congress has no more power to make a slave than to make a King-no more power to establish slavery, than to establish monarchy. To the demand for more slave States, and more slave territory, their answer was, "No more slave States, and no slave territory." The convention demanded freedom, especially for Oregon, California, and New Mexico.

The leaders of this organization embodied ardent enthusiastic democrats, and liberty loving whigs, filled with zeal against slavery; and mingled with them were the personal friends of President Van Buren, indignant at, and determined to revenge his sacrifice by the slave power. The free soil party conducted the canvass against the old parties, with an eloquence of the tongue and pen-with an ability and energy never surpassed in the history of the Republic. Their canvass was the romance and poetry of politics, and their political creed, the religion of patriotism.

John Van Buren brought into this campaign an indignant personal feeling towards those who "done his father to death," and a fiery e'oquence, wit, and sarcasm, which rendered him a great popular favorite, and secured to him the most brilliant national reputation. John P. Hale, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, S. P. Chase, Cassius M. Clay, Benjamin F. Butler, William C. Bryant, and David Wilmot, and many others,

were among the most active and ardent leaders in this contest. Although the ticket carried no electoral votes, it received a very large popular support, especially through New England, New York, and the Northwest, and defeated General Cass. There were many anti-slavery whigs who supported General Taylor for the Presidency, among them, the great statesman of New England, Daniel Webster, and the great popular leader of New York, William H. Seward, and he who was to be the instrument in the final overthrow of slavery, Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois. The great organ of public sentiment, the New York Tribune, also gave its support to General Taylor. Meanwhile, the politicians, fearing the growth of the great free soil party, undertook to settle the slavery question by the compromise measure of 1850.

The Thirty-first Congress met in December, 1849. The struggle for, and the resistance to the extension of slavery continued more and more to agitate the country. The United States had acquired by the treaty of peace with Mexico, the immense territory of upper and lower California and New Mexico. The Wilmot proviso, although it had twice passed the House of Representatives, had always been rejected by the Senate. The slave power hoped the great victory it had achieved by this vast acquisition of territory was secure. But the struggle still continued. Fourteen free States adopted resolutions protesting against the enlargement of the area of slavery. The slaveholders deprecating the struggle in Congress attempted to forestall its action by organizing a slave State in California. Knowing that General Cass and the party that supported him for the Presidency in 1848, were committed to non-intervention, and that slaves were already in California, and believing they could organize a State Constitution there, which would sustain and secure slavery, emissaries were despatched to California to get up a State convention and adopt a pro-slavery Constitution. After the inauguration of President Taylor in 1849, Thomas Butler King, of Georgia, a warm advocate of slavery, and in confidential relations with the administration, went to California and urged the formation of a State government, pledging to the movement the support of the administration, and urging the